


The City on the Edge of Forever

by ASongofSixpence



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Finding meaning in an endless cycle, Found Family, Mutual Pining, Tesseralia, can be hard when you're a nerd with anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-28 22:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17191808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASongofSixpence/pseuds/ASongofSixpence
Summary: Barry knows it is selfish to wish away the extra time he has been given. To live like he does, in a long, uncertain forever, is something Tesseralia, and every other lost planet, would give anything for. But he wishes it away nonetheless.





	The City on the Edge of Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Something about the way Griffin said, “So you get an apartment here,” struck me as very Star Trek TOS, (which you can see by the title), and I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I started this little fic the summer of last year, when the Balance arc was still coming out, and while I was really struggling to write anything. I’m happy I can finally share it now, even and especially because it's so different than I thought it would be when I started. 
> 
> Endless, ENDLESS, thank you's to [kojum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kojum/), who helped me through all three drafts of this little fic, and honestly understood what I was trying to do better than I did.

After Merle joins the First Monastery, Magnus is the next to leave. Barry isn’t overly surprised by this. Magnus has never struck him as a man accustomed to city life, and doesn’t seem like he’d thrive in Tesseralia. His IPRE file says his father was a trapper by trade, and that he’d grown up in a village far away from the Institute. It didn’t say how he’d ended up there, and Barry had never asked.

After Magnus leaves it’s only a matter of time before the other four go their separate ways. Taako and Lup go next, together of course, and then Lucretia. Davenport insists he stay with the ship, which the Tesseralians are all too happy to accommodate. They’d talked about it first, held a family meeting and agreed that some time apart would be healthy for all of them. Barry had not been as eager as the others, but they’d all been so excited, what could he have said? That he’d already lived a lifetime alone, and didn’t care for more? It’s not as if the others had it any easier. No one who commits to a life of space travel has people that they can’t bear to leave behind.

So when all is said and done, Barry says nothing. He finds a space for him to fill and settles down to wait out a year alone. After all, he has the time to spare.

 

It’s hot and humid year round in Tesseralia. The city is mostly populated by dark skinned folk with short hair, who wear loose clothing made from light, bright-colored fabrics. Barry sometimes thinks that were he ever to visit one of the city’s large markets with Lucretia he might lose her in the crowd, so similar does she appear to a native Tesseralian.

Barry has always worn his hair short, and is unbothered by keeping it that way, but he misses the comfort found in the close crop of his Institute jacket. Sometimes, despite the heat, he’ll wear it around his apartment while he’s tidying up in the evening. If that means wearing it to bed, well, that’s purely by accident.

Much of Tesseralia is built into the sheer slopes of a mountainside, including the Monastery, which looks down on the breadth of the city and then out, across the port, onto the sea. The apartment that Barry rents is down in the city's valley, closer to the ocean, and he spends his hours walking along the docks, listening to the call of fishermen and the cry of birds.

This is how his life could have been, he sometimes thinks, if he hadn’t joined the Institute. He could have lived out his time in silence—growing old, doing work, never marrying or settling down. His body still appears thirty-eight. If he were living on his home planet he would be sixty-eight this year.

No. Correction. If he were still living on his homeworld he would be dead.

 

The humdrum of living idly wears on him eventually, so he gets a job: A research position at a local university that pays next to nothing. Not that it matters, since the Monastery has been so generous as to give them all a monthly stipend to live on during their stay here. This world is kind that way, unlike other worlds they’ve visited.

The work is tedious, but it gives him something to fill his head with. When he’s home alone with nothing to do his body feels strangely hollow, placeless. To distract himself he tries to fill his hours with reading, and on nights where he can work up the appetite, attempts to replicate a few recipes that Lup and Taako have taught him. For some reason they always come out strangely bland, even when he follows their written instructions exactly. Without meaning to he finds himself falling back into the same habits he’d kept as a younger man, after his mother had died and he’d lived alone: Staying up reading until he can’t hold his eyes open anymore, slipping into dreamless sleep, and then waking up at noon with just enough time to walk to work.

Even with all the effort he puts forth to keep his mind busy, in spare moments his thoughts drift towards the future. Towards the next cycle, when he will live with his family again. Sometimes he pictures what they might be doing. Merle, he knows, is at the Monastery, though it’s hard to guess how he’s fitting in there. Davenport is with the ship, probably doing maintenance and trying to reorganize the lab. Lucretia had mentioned that she wanted to spend some time in Tesseralia’s libraries before they parted ways, and it’s easy to imagine her there, reading in peace, with no one to bother her for once. That thought makes him happy.

The rest are harder to figure out, especially with no clues to go on, so he lets himself dream big: Magnus has found a dog sanctuary and takes a nap covered in puppies every day; Taako has been taken under the wing of a local celebrity chef and is dining with a different fabulous person every night; Lup...well. Lup is harder to think about than the others, in a way Barry knows is very stupid. It just makes his chest ache, makes his loneliness louder. Whatever she’s doing, he hopes she’s eating something delicious, and that this year will be over quickly, so she can tell him all about it.

Barry knows it is selfish to wish away the extra time he has been given. To live like he does, in a long, uncertain forever, is something Tesseralia, and every other lost planet, would give anything for. But he wishes it away nonetheless.

 

One day, a couple months into the year, he’s walking down one of the wide, cobblestoned main streets on his way to work, and it’s crowded as usual, filled with people selling their wares on the side of the road, or pulling small wheeled carts, or hurrying to buy their lunch, and he sees—could that be her? The back of a slender neck, pale hair shaved close to a dark scalp. A graceful but efficient gait, carrying her away from him.

“Lucretia?”

His voice is swallowed up by the crowd; she couldn’t have possibly heard. He hurries after her, knowing he’ll feel foolish if he’s wrong.

“Lucretia!”

The figure turns, casting a surprised glance at the passerby. She hasn’t seen him. He waves, and to his relief, she smiles. A small but earnest smile, one he’s come to know well.

“Barry.”

“I thought that was you.” He presses a hand to his chest and then yanks on the collar of his shirt, overheated from the crowd and the sun and his short jog. “Few! I uh, I just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi.”

They stare at each other for a second, still as stone as the crowd flows around them. Barry realizes he hadn’t actually had anything else to say to her.

“Well, I should go to work—”

“Do you want to see my apartment?” Lucretia says quickly, putting a hand on his shoulder as he turns to leave. She drops it as soon as he turns back around, embarrassment making her look younger, strangely vulnerable. “Rather, would you like to come for dinner sometime? You could...tell me about your job.”

“Oh, yeah, sure!” Barry says. “I’d love that, actually. I….” _Miss you_ is maybe too dramatic. He doesn’t want to sound pathetic, even in front of Lucretia, who would understand. “Should probably eat something other than my own cooking, anyway,” is what he settles on. “It never comes out right.”

She flips open her notebook, which he realizes now she had been writing in as she walked, and jots down an address. “Does next week work for you?”

She rips the paper out and hands it to him, and Barry takes it, feeling warm in a way that has nothing to do with the humidity.

“Next week would be perfect.”

 

Lucretia has rented an airy apartment on top of a hill, close to the city's largest library. The thirty minute walk uphill leaves Barry severely winded, and he’s almost regretting accepting her invitation to visit, but the view from the top is worth it. Lucretia’s apartment has a large bay window that looks down and out into the city, and across the hillside to the Monastery. When Barry asks if she ever sees Merle out there on the lawn she just chuckles and hands him a cup of a type of juice she’s become partial to. When Barry takes a sip he finds it much too sour for his taste, but drinks it all anyway, because he’s missed her.

“This place is beautiful. How did you find it?”

They’re sitting in a pair of chairs angled across from the bay window. The sun has just begun to set, and it casts Lucretia in warm gold, lighting up the rings on her fingers as she takes another sip.

“One of the former docents at the library owns it. Her wife is on sabbatical, so they’re renting it out to me while they’re away.”

Barry smiles. “I’m glad you made friends here.”

Lucretia blinks at him, then glances away. “Yes,” she says, suddenly stilted. “Um, and you?”

“Have I made friends?”

“Your place, do you like it?”

Barry thinks about his small apartment. How dark it is in the evenings, with no one to keep the rooms lit for. “It’s not too bad. I can hear the ocean from my bedroom window. It reminds me of the beach world, from a couple cycles ago.”

“Mm.” Something about this makes Lucretia turn her face to the window, eyes cast downward. Her profile is so familiar to him now, from the soft curve of her nose to the thoughtful tilt of her jaw. So similar to when he met her, when she was just nineteen, but also, undoubtedly changed.

“I miss them,” Barry says, before he can chicken out.

Lucretia looks up at him, eyes wide.

“Our family,” he clarifies. “I know it hasn’t been very long, but I miss seeing them every day. I hate being alone.” He laughs out loud at the truth of it. “It sucks.”

Lucretia lets out a breath. Puts her cup down.

“Thank gods,” she says. “I thought I was the only one.”

 

Barry moves in a few weeks later. Getting his belongings up the hill is honestly one of the worst things he’s ever experienced (and that’s saying a lot, considering) but he hasn’t picked up many things during his time here, so he manages it all in one trip.

Lucretia greets him at the door with a glass of ice water, which Barry gladly accepts, dropping the reins of the pull-cart he’d rented and clutching his back.

“I’m...getting too old for this,” he pants, and takes a long drink. “Where’s Magnus when you need him.”

“I don’t know,” Lucretia says plainly. “I haven’t heard from him since he left.”

Barry drains the water and huffs out a breath. He puts his hands on his hips and looks at her.

“Well,” he says, with a bravado he hopes will make her smile. “Who needs him, really? Let me get this stuff inside.”

 

Living with Lucretia is easy—not that he thought it wouldn’t be. Over the years they’ve spent a lot of time together, so he knows her well, but this is the most time they’ve ever spent just the two of them. There’s a certain comfort in the routine they develop: in Barry waking up early to cut them fruit for breakfast, in finding Lucretia still writing by the window late into the evening, illuminated by soft lamplight. In notes left on the door in neat handwriting that say, _I’ll be home late tonight_ , or, _We need more juice_.

It changes the way he interacts with the rest of the world, too. People he’s exchanged inconsequential words with a dozen times suddenly have faces. He notices the shy smile of the man that he buys tea from on his way to work every day, or the child making faces at him from the arms of their parent as he waits to cross a busy intersection.

Barry begins to try and make a point of running into the other researchers at his work. There’s one in particular, a handsome, broad-faced man named Thred, who says a cheery hello to Barry every time he sees him. It’s only since moving in with Lucretia that Barry’s realized he’s never actually said hello back.

One day Barry comes into the lab early, just as Thred is getting ready to leave for his lunch break. He glances up at Barry and smiles, ducking his head in greeting.

“Afternoon,” Barry says.

Thred looks pleased, but not overly surprised. This much they’ve done before.

“I’ll be back in about an hour,” he says, standing from his desk and swinging his bag over his shoulder. “But you can call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks. Um, Thred?”

The man pauses by the door, looking back at him with bright, expectant, eyes. Barry tries not to fidget.

“Did you want to, uh, get a drink sometime, maybe? I don’t really know a lot of people here, and I…wanted to reach out.”

Thred’s face positively lights up. “I’d love that! Actually a couple of the other researchers have been asking about you, but I said you were pretty shy, so I wasn’t sure if you’d want to get together.”

Shy is a much nicer word than standoffish. Thred is a saint.

“Yeah, I. I am, kind of. Sorry about that.”

“No!” Thred shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to get people together to do bar trivia. Would you be interested?”

Barry laughs. All university labs are the same, really, across all worlds. “I don’t think I’d be any good at trivia. But, if you don’t mind me weighing you down….”

“Not at all.” Thred glances at his watch. “I already clocked out, so I should go, but let’s talk about it when I get back.”

They do, and a couple nights later Barry does go, though he’s right about knowing absolutely nothing about trivia from this world. The rest of his labmates are kind about it, and in fact are all sweet, interesting people. The next trivia night he brings Lucretia, who has, no surprise, been learning all about Tesseralia during her time here, and they win handily. It makes him very popular.

 

And then, a couple months after he’s moved in, Barry comes home holding a bag of fruit he’d been intimidated into buying by a pushy saleswoman, and when he walks through his front door Lup is standing in his kitchen, chopping vegetables.

Her hair is longer than it was the last time he saw her. That makes his heart swell in a silly way; the fashion is to have it short, so of course she’s grown it out, or somehow charmed it to be bigger and longer and curlier than it was before. She’s more freckled than she was at the beginning of the year, and adorned in more jewelry. The amount of trinkets she collects in her ears have doubled in number, and she has two new gold hoops in her nose.

The orange sun through the living room window has lit up the frizzy flyaways in her hair like she’s the head of a matchstick. Her scruffy eyebrows are furrowed in concentration as she measures spices. Barry doesn’t know exactly what to call the emotion that squeezes his heart everytime he sees her, but he’s a scientist; he knows that the things that are hardest to understand are sometimes the most important.

“Lup is here!” Lucretia chirps from where she’s sitting in the living room, which must mean Barry has been standing silently in the doorway for too long to be normal. Lucretia isn’t one to spout redundancies.

“I see that,” Barry says, just as Lup glances up at him, seeing him for the first time.

“Well if it isn’t Barold,” she says, the big smile on her face coming so easy. “What’s cracking?”

She’d run into Lucretia while buying groceries, Lup explains. He’s surprised to learn that Taako hadn’t been with her, and more surprised to learn they haven’t been living together in the last couple months after all. He suspects this to mean they’ve had some big falling out, but when he inches around the subject Lup just leans back in her chair and says, “It’s good for us to have space sometimes, you know. See the sights. Meet the people. He’s actually on a…a food journey? Or something. It’s all very Eat, Pray, Love.”

Barry glances at Lucretia. “A what now?”

“Don’t worry about it, Barr.”

The dinner she made them is fucking delicious, but he has trouble focusing on it. He can’t keep his eyes off her, and she absolutely notices. She keeps smiling back at him, something that’s a little too warm to be a smirk, but with the same touch of wryness. He can’t help it, she’s glowing gold. He hasn’t even noticed that the sun set hours ago.

Lucretia, gods bless her, makes some excuse about waking up early (honestly she could have said anything, Barry was not listening) and leaves them alone to clean up dinner together. Barry is washing dishes, but he keeps getting distracted watching Lup poke around the living room. He’s washing the same pan for the third time when Lup puts the book she’d been inspecting back on the table and looks over at him.

“Alright Bluejeans, you’ve been googly eyes at me all day. What’s up?”

“Nothing! It’s just...I’ve, uh. I’ve missed you.” It feels like such a small sentiment for such a big feeling. His body is thrumming with joy, just being near her. He turns the water off and puts the pan down as Lup smiles, wrinkling her nose at him. Not like Taako would, to say, _really? It’s been five minutes_ , but like she’s just eaten something and it was sweeter than she was expecting. Her eyes are crinkled as she crosses toward him.

“I’ve missed you too, goof. Let me see how this world’s been treating you.”

He’s not sure what she means until she makes a little gesture for him to do a spin, and then he laughs, feeling foolish as he turns once around. He has no idea what she sees—his soapy hands, hair standing on end from the humidity, glasses foggy from the steam off the hot water—but whatever it is makes her let out a long, low whistle.

“Looking good bub, you been lifting weights?” she says teasingly. “Fantasy Zumba? You’re making those jeans work for you.”

He wipes some steam off his glasses, a little self-conscious with her eyes all over him. “Well, living at the top of a mountain has its perks.”

“Seems like it, this place is _swanky_.” She lets off ogling him and crosses back towards the window, which they’ve left open in hopes of coaxing in the cool night air. Before he can reply, she turns back to him. Her gaze lands on him squarely, and for a long, long, moment she just stares, head tilted to the side. Then her eyes slip sideways, across the room, and Barry finds himself choked by the sudden feeling that there’s something critical he’s missing. Like she’d been waiting on a cue from him, though he has no idea what it could have been.

“Well,” she says. “I think I better mosey on. It’s getting pretty late.”

“Oh, are you sure?” He sounds a little more desperate than is probably warranted. “You could stay, if you wanted to. I could take the couch.”

She smiles. “That couch is cute, but I sat on it earlier. We both know it’s _one-hundo-p_ garbage.”

“I don’t mind, really,” he says feebly. He knows there’s no point in trying to change Lup’s mind, but he hates that she’s leaving already. She hasn’t even told him where she’s staying.

Lup is already at the door. She has her hand on the handle. Then, she turns back.

“Hey,” she says, voice light. “Do you wanna get dinner again sometime, just the two of us? There’s like…some really fucking sick restaurants here.”

Barry blinks. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, yeah of course.”

She smiles at him brightly. “Hell yeah. I’ll call your stone of farspeech?”

“Yeah, please.” This is maybe a lame thing to say. Barry shakes his head, tries to correct himself to something cooler. “And by that I mean...I would like that.”

There’s not much of a difference. Lup still makes that face that means she’s fondly thinking he’s a nerd, a sentiment so commonly expressed it’s transcended verbal communication.

“Tight. Night night, Barold, don’t let the Hunger bite.”

“Goodnight.”

After Lup leaves, Barry finishes washing the dishes. He tidies up his room, changes out of his clothes, and gets ready for bed. Then he lays there, awake for hours, listening to the city slowly hush and wondering if, after thirty years of space travel, he’s been asked out on a date.

 

The place she takes him is actually less of a restaurant, and more of a food cart, tucked along the side of a plaza. It’s evening, so the place is busy. Even though there’s no seating, people are scattered across the plaza, slurping from ceramic bowls. One group that catches Barry’s attention in particular is a young couple sitting on the lip of an ornate fountain in the center of the square, watching their children scream and splash in the water with patient but tired eyes, speaking quietly to one another between sips.

“This is one of the first places Taako and I learned about,” Lup explains as they approach. “It’s kind of a hidden gem and the cook is a total boss. Look.”

The man running the stall does so with deft confidence. Barry watches as he grabs a bowl, ladles broth out of a pot, then adds some type of grain and an assortment of toppings. It takes him about 30 seconds, and then he’s onto the next customer. The smell of the broth as it wafts toward them is heavenly, heavy with something complex and spicy that Barry can’t quite place.

Lup nudges him, apparently noticing the way he’s staring at the menu. It’s short, but Barry is notoriously indecisive. “I’ll order for you if you want. I know what’s good.”

“Okay,” Barry says, relieved. “But I’ll pay.”

Lup scoffs, but takes his money and waves him out of line.

The man running the stall remembers Lup (of course he does, who could forget her), and Barry watches them have a short but animated conversation from afar as he tries to find them a place to sit. He ends up on a bench facing the fountain, watching as the sun falls lower in the sky, steadily turning the pale cobblestone to lavender.

Lup crosses toward him, holding two bowls. She hands him one then settles down beside him. “Tell me about your job.”

Barry glances over, surprised to find her looking back at him earnestly. He’d described his job to Lucretia after she’d asked, but for some reason he didn’t think Lup would be interested.

“Oh. Well, uh, so right now the university is really being pushed to prioritize research that will aid in agriculture growth, because in the years since they discovered Parlay the population has expanded faster than they were prepared for. So they’re trying to figure out how to mass-produce sustainably. The lab I’m working at is still in the early stages of a bigger project, so I’m just analyzing soil samples, mostly. It’s...not the most exciting work.”

Lup smirks, “But you still love it, huh, nerd.”

“Yeah,” Barry says, and as it comes out of his mouth he’s surprised to find that it’s true. “I do, actually.” He takes a long drink of his soup without thinking and then freezes. “Oh shit,” he says. “Oh...heck, Lup. This is incredible.”

She nods vigorously, slamming a hand on her knee. “I told you, the man is a fucking soup wizard! He refuses to tell me the recipe, but I’ll wear him down.”

Barry laughs into his bowl, taking another sip and trying to be more intentional in the way he savors the flavor. “What about you? What have you been doing?”

“Oh, I’ve been taking cooking classes.”

Barry laughs again, and then sees her expression turn sour. “I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I wasn’t laughing at you, I just can’t believe there’s anything left for you to learn.”

“I’m a genius cook, Barry, but it’s never a bad time to get schooled.” She takes a prim and pointed sip from her bowl. He’d be worried, but he’s known her long enough to tell when she’s teasing him. “Sometimes you gotta go back to the ol’ basics, and the food here kicks ass. You’ll be glad next year when I start blowing your jeans off every meal.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

They eat in silence for a little bit. Barry watches the couple as they finish their food and start attempting to wrangle their children. One of the children starts to cry as they’re pulled away from the fountain, but is consoled when their parent settles them on their shoulders. It’s almost dark now, and they’re quickly obfuscated by the crowd, but the image stays with him: A group of silhouettes, leaned up together, making their way home.

When he looks away Lup is staring at him.

“Sorry,” he says, unsure if she’d said something he’d missed. “I think I’m becoming sentimental in my old age.”

She huffs a laugh. “Nice try, humanmen, but you’re still a baby compared to me.”

Lup turns her attention back towards her meal after that, but Barry can’t find it in him to look away from her face. The evening half-light has changed her: softening her eyes and dulling her sharp edges. She looks young and untroubled, like she did before they started their long, long journey. She is so fucking beautiful, and for a moment, Barry thinks he could forget their history. He could pretend they were just two people on a first date, sharing a meal together, uncertain where the night will take them. Maybe he’ll walk her home later. Maybe he’ll kiss her at the door.

“Lup?” He says.

She glances over at him. “Yeah?”

This is not what Taako had meant, when he’d told Barry he had all the time in the world. He’d meant it to be comforting—that he could act when he was ready. And it _was_ comforting, and it was true. But. Barry had already known he had the time. Time to think, and plan, and think more, and wish, and want, and wait….

Here is the bald faced truth of it. Here is why he can’t pretend. When Barry had fallen in love with her, he’d understood implicitly that there was too much to lose if it went wrong. So he’d buried the feeling. He’d pressed the words back into his mouth and made a decision.

“Just…you know I care about you…right?”

The sentiment is passed through their crew often enough that it doesn’t surprise her, and he didn’t expect it to. She laughs and looks away.

“Yeah, babe,” she says. A shadow hides her eyes from him. “Of course I know.”  

 

Eventually one of Lucretia’s coworkers invites her over for a small dinner party, and she brings Barry as her plus one. Neither of them are particularly skilled partygoers in any sense, but they must make a good impression, because Barry finds himself with a brand new set of friends. They make a point of showing he and Lucretia around the city, and seem to delight in playing tour-guide. It’s in this way that Barry learns about some of his favorite spots in Tesseralia: the pocket park made from a torn-down weapons factory; the cafe filled with lush plant-life and strange, tittering birds; the public bathhouse deep underground, fed from a fresh-water spring.

He sees Lup regularly, too. Not as often as he’d like, but they try and get together every couple weeks. Sometimes with Lucretia, sometimes just the two of them. He delights in showing her the new places he’s found, heart squeezing when she seems just as excited as he is. (He would pay good money to have someone paint a picture of her in the bird cafe, laughing loudly as a prattle of green parakeets pick their way through her hair.) One night, when Lucretia is working late, he brings Lup to trivia night instead. She knows just about as much Tesseralian trivia as he does, but they somehow still win after Lup loudly argues with the MC about the validity of every single one of their answers.

The next day, when he comes into work, Thred looks over at him with wide eyes and says, “Your girlfriend is amazing. Like, _amazing_.”

Barry doesn’t really have the words to correct him, so he just nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “She is.”

 

One day, near the end of the year, Barry is walking to work, and he can’t help but notice that the city is different. The crowds are out in full force, maybe even larger than usual, but they are strangely hushed. Reverent. Even more striking, the color palate of the street has changed. Gone are the bright pastels of the Tesseralians' clothes, exchanged for deep red and burgundy. Scarlette, maroon, and carmine. It’s bewildering, and has him turning in circles, unable to shake the feeling he’s seeing the familiar red robes of the Institute out of the corner of his eye.

He’s passing through one of the morning markets when he finally stops to ask what’s going on. The sweet faced woman he buys Lucretia’s juice from softly explains, “It’s our day of memorial. We celebrate the souls who passed in war. In the time before Parlay.”

“Oh,” He blinks. “Thank you. I don’t know how I haven’t heard of it.”

She smiles, “Me neither, sir. But work isn’t mandatory today, so people can take part in the parade. You should go see.”

He tilts his head at her. “But you’re still working.”

It earns him a wry grin. “Lots of thirsty people after the parade, sir.”

He buys a jug of juice from her as a thank you (and because Lucretia goes through the stuff at a rate that’s really quite astounding), and starts to walk back up the hill. Lucretia picks up her stone of farspeech after the first tone.

“I heard,” she says with no preamble. “Some of the staff at the library asked if I wanted to walk with them to the top of the hill to watch.”

“Well, should we go take a look?”

 

The spot her coworkers lead them to is an outlook high on the slope of the mountain, up rows and rows of cobblestone steps. It’s even higher than Lucretia’s apartment, looking clear down onto the Monastery. They’re not the only ones there—it seems a fairly popular spot to watch the proceedings—but an older woman who looks like she’s been settled in for a while, sitting on a blanket and sipping tea, waves them forward so they can sit on the ledge with her. She introduces herself as the head librarian, and she and Barry exchange pleasantries for a couple moments before she directs his attention to the scene below.

There’s a crowd forming in the expansive courtyard in front of the Monastery, all dressed in red, spilling in from every corner of the city until it seems like the old stone must be about to crack under their weight. Barry strains his eyes to pick out Merle, but even if he is there it’s impossible to find him in the mass of dark bodies and red clothes.

Beside him, Lucretia is scribbling quickly into one of her journals. There’s a pop, and she curses quietly, discarding the broken pen and searching her bag for another. The bell above the Monastery chimes once, then again.

Barry sucks in a breath. “Lucretia, look!”

The mass of bodies collected around the Monastery ripples outward, as if they are a pond that a stone has been dropped in the center of. Lucretia looks up from her bag just as the initial wave spills down the first flight of steps.

“Oh,” she says.

The revelers make their way through the city streets, chugging along like channels of blood. From as high up as he is, Barry can just hear the sounds they’re making. It’s something soft and sweet ticking deep inside his ear.

And then he realises that they’re singing.

He doesn’t know the words, is too far away to make them out, but still, it catches him somewhere deep in his chest. A sweet, joyous, sound.

He’s stopped dreaming his time away. He realizes it now, looking down on this world, at its people, who are singing love songs for their dead. He’s found something he cherishes here, and for once, he does not have the luxury of time.

Lucretia has given up trying to find a pen. Barry feels a touch on his sleeve, and then she’s holding his hand. They stand there until the song is over, until the singers are gone, and then longer still. As if for the last time, just looking.

 

They’d made plans to have Lup over for dinner that night, and when Barry opens the door for her she’s already grinning. She’d seen Merle in the parade, she tells them both, and he’d told her that he’d successfully learned how to Parlay. Abbess Oriana will give them the Light of Creation. She’s even gotten in contact with Davenport, and he’ll be reaching out to the others soon, to have a family meeting before Merle attempts first contact with the Hunger.

It’s great news—it means there is hope for this world—but it leaves Barry in a strange mood. Both Lup and Lucretia seem to notice his reserve, and keep casting concerned eyes at him over the dinner table, even as they speak openly to one another. Lup tells them how she’s heard from Magnus, too. He’s apparently coaching some sort of children’s sports team, which is not what Barry would have guessed, but also makes a kind of sense.

Lup spears a vegetable with her fork and says, “We absolutely have to go to one of his games before we leave. Can’t you just imagine him being all go-fight-win with a bunch of little babies? So cute.”

Barry just forces a smiles and nods.

After dinner, Lucretia heads to her room to go find a book she wants to lend Lup while Barry starts on dishes. Lup finishes piling up plates and then puts them in the sink, leaning up next to him.

“Hey, Bluejeans,” she says, side-eyeing him. “What’s got your denim all in a twist?”

He looks up at her, and is struck by the sudden similarity between this and the first time she’d made them dinner on this world. He’d been standing right here, by the sink, so delighted to see her again he couldn’t think straight, and she had teased him, her eyes warm. That hadn’t been too long ago.

He’s going to miss Tesseralia. He understands this suddenly and acutely. He’s going to miss the way the orange sunlight falls through their living room window in the afternoon. Going to miss the small, surprised smile Lucretia gives him when she wakes up to find him making her breakfast, even though he does it every morning. Going to miss his new friends, and his labmates—fuck, going to miss his work, even. The life he carved out for himself here is small, and simple, but for one short, beautiful year, it belonged to him. And he knows that even if he’ll never forget it, he’ll never have it again.

“Barry?” Lup is frowning. Understandably, since he’s been staring at her in silence for a couple moments now. She’s leaned towards him and is peering down at his face, as if she could read his thoughts in the dark of his eyes. She’s so sweet sometimes, it makes his chest hurt. “Are you okay?”

Her hair has fallen out from behind her ear, and he reaches up and tucks it back. When she blinks at him in surprise, he lets his hand drop, but can’t bear to move it farther than the curve of her cheek, cupping her jaw.

“I’m fine,” he says, but it comes out softer than he means it to.

She nods mutely. It’s so unusual to find her speechless, and for the very first time, Barry gets a sense of how nervous she is, eyes huge and uncharacteristically hesitant. A thought comes to him that is too big and strange to think about all at once, but that knocks the air from him nonetheless: the impossibility that Lup may want him, too.

“Are you?” he asks.

“Yeah,” She swallows loudly; seems slightly breathless. “I’m pretty cool with this.”

He laughs, quietly, in the face of the huge thing between them that neither are quite sure how to look at yet, but suddenly seems impossible to ignore. “I uh, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know where to go from here.”

It makes Lup smile, rids her of the anxious look in her eyes. She slides her arms around his neck to murmur something in his ear:

“You’re pretty smart, Barry. I think we can figure it out.”

Tomorrow, they may not speak of this. Or maybe they will, and they’ll go to one of Magnus’s games, and Lup will cheer and throw popcorn at the back of Magnus’s head. Maybe he’ll hold her hand and they’ll walk along the docks and make up for lost hours. And then, sooner than he’d hope, they will leave this world, and the people in it will be saved, or killed, but at the very least, lost to them forever.

But tonight, if only for this moment, Tesseralia is thriving, and Lup is warm in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Wanna talk about TAZ? Find me on twitter [@squaasha](https://twitter.com/squaasha/) or tumblr [@starfleetofficial!](http://starfleetofficial.tumblr.com/)


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